


The Case of the Missing Skull

by wrabbit



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Comment Fic, Community: fic_promptly, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:44:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrabbit/pseuds/wrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock misplaces the skull and John learns more than he ever wanted to know about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Case of the Missing Skull

**Author's Note:**

> Criticism: Welcome

"What have you done with it?" Sherlock demanded the moment John arrived home from work and before he had even closed the door behind himself.

"What?" John began about the weary process of pulling the coat off his shoulders. He sighed as he cast his eyes over the state of the room. The couch had been pulled away from the wall, the chairs moved. Every drawer and cupboard was swinging open or removed entirely, contents pillaged and the floor scattered with the resulting debris.

"Have we been burgled?" he asked Sherlock. "What is it?"

Pacing the floor restlessly, Sherlock muttered something incomprehensible to himself.

"Sherlock, what happened?" John asked again. He went into the kitchen. The tea cupboard had been emptied onto the counter so at least he didn't have to go to the trouble to lift his arms. He filled the electric kettle, yawning.

"I can't find the skull," Sherlock said more clearly.

"Mrs Hudson probably has it," John said, unconcerned.

"She doesn't," Sherlock answered, "I checked."

"She probably hid it somewhere."

"No!"

John could still hear Sherlock in the other room, rifling through one of his many mysterious cardboard boxes. He smiled through another yawn, wondering if Sherlock was checking the boxes labeled 'S.' It abruptly occurred to him as the water began to boil that John had no idea who the skull even belonged to, originally. It seemed a gross oversight.

"There are only two or three places she could have placed it."

Another box was dropped on the floor and its contents spilled.

"I think you underestimate her," John said, walking into the living room with a mug of brewing tea in each hand. He set Sherlock's on the as-of-yet undisturbed side table and held on the comforting warmth of his own as he was forced to witness the continuing destruction of their living space.

"She wouldn't _hide it_ , John."

John considered this, how much he would want a hot breakfast in the morning and whether he should take the opportunity to escape their flat's relatively high level of mania by doing the shopping now. "Then what on earth does she do with it?"

"Usually, she watches _The Soprano's_."

"I'm sorry: _What_?"

"It's her husband's, it's Mr Hudson's skull!" Sherlock finally spat, absolutely spinning in agitation.

John's eyes went wide.

"What?" He gasped. "Why on earth do _you_ have it?"

He turned, looking around himself as if it would be lying there on the floor just before them, watching the frantic search from the corner with its mocking grin.

Deciding he could interrogate Sherlock and help him look at the same time, John set down his tea to better strip the couch of its cushions.

Sherlock was giving the same treatment to the John's chair.

"I..." Sherlock waved an elegant hand behind himself.

"Oh god, don't tell me. No. Later." John ran one hand through his hair and squeezed the back of his neck.

Oh, god, the skull was their landlady's dead husband, her executed husband.

John knew Sherlock was the trophy type. His jealously kept piles of newspaper and boxes full of old case junk all spoke to that, but oh, _god_. John stopped himself. There would be time to be properly, accusingly horrified later.

"We have to find it," he declared.

"Yes!" Sherlock shouted, straightening, but there were apparently more galling things afoot than John's slowness. He rubbed his eyelids in frustration, other hand resting on his hip.

"She's going to kill you," John volunteered. "We'll be homeless."

Sherlock scowled, but didn't begin to correct John on these facts. "Shut up!" he said suddenly, one finger raising in the empty air.

John pulled his head out from under the table. "Sherlock, what - "

"Be quiet!"

Knowing better than to try moving, John sighed, rested his head against the table leg.

"Do you hear that?"

"No," John answered automatically, tapping his forehead once against the wood.

"Sherlock?"

John levered himself up and scrambled after his flatmate at the sound of the door hitting the wall in Sherlock's haste to open it. John chased him down the stairs and followed the sound of a breathless gasp into Mrs Hudson's flat.

"Mrs Hudson!" John sighed as he came to an abrupt stop just behind Sherlock's frozen form in her living room.

"John, dear, what's wrong? What's gotten into you, Sherlock?"

Sherlock looked down at John, his face breaking into a crooked, relieved grin. John laughed.

Mrs Hudson was at her couch, a laptop and a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of her, and beside that, there was the skull, turned about and grinning wildly at the credits of _The Riches_.

Mrs Hudson raised an eyebrow at the two men in her living room. "Would you like a biscuit?" she asked. She nodded at the television. "It's the second series."

"No. No thank you, Mrs Hudson, we'll let you get on," John laughed again and tried for a serious, unalarming nod. He grabbed Sherlock's wrist and tugged him away from where he was still stuck in place, gazing at the empty eyesockets's apparent interest in the television with a oddly wistful look on his face.

Back in their flat, John fell on the pile of couch pillows on the floor and laughed in delight.

"Oh my god," he said when it was over. "You are both absolutely cracked."

Sherlock loomed in silence. He sipped from his overbrewed cup of tea, apparently lost in thought. "What?" he asked John. "Oh, yes."


End file.
